MBT on film and matters autobiographical

Zee Oddwyn was asking:

"Speaking of which, any chance there might be a Half-continent movie? In general, it seems that movies dealing with monsters or fae creatures have been very popular recently."

Indeed they have, which is great on one level yet I cannot help be a little concerned of such a trend in regards to my own work. If ever a film was to be made of MBT I would hope it is not a "Yarrgghh! Monsters!" kind of film that focuses more on effects and beasties and less on character and the solidity and believability of the setting.

A good example of this bad approach (at least, perhaps, on an advertising level) was the film of The Bridge to Terabithia - very much sold as a fantasy movie with wingy-do special effects. Yet, having not read the book (shame on me!) what do I discover - to my initial disappointment - that it is more about relationships and the human condition and the durability of the soul. Indeed, the fantastical world I was so looking forward to it being about was just a device to show the growth of friendship and individual spirit. All excellent stuff, now that I have got over my dismay, a brilliant story - I need to read the book.

Now admittedly, MBT is about monsters more directly and is actually a "secondary world" without reference to our own but that is the thing: my hope would be that a film-maker would recognise that at the heart of MBT and any other novels I might get to write (Lord willing) about the Half-Continent is in fact the Half-Continent itself, the most enduring 'character' throughout. That subtlety might be required not "Rargh! I'm a cool special effects monster!!!"

And, Master Oddwyn, in actual answer to your question, the Jim Henson Company currently has the option to make MBT into films: 2 movies from the 3 currently planned books - I think they feel there is not enough in Book 1 to warrant one entire film. Yet the big hold up currently is the Writer's Strike and I must say that I did not think I would somehow be connected with something so, well, international, so show-biz, that I would have a personal response to jokes made about it on the Letterman show... very bizarre.

So the chance of a film are still variable, for an option on a book means simply a company has the exclusive right and the occasion to make a film from it. Whether something is actually produced is impacted by many factors not the least of which is money and such things as an actual script - hence the hold up with the strike. Watch this space.

I do believe I still need to answer Lawrence's question about the auto-biographical nature of MBT. This hits me right in the "ooh-I-like-talking-about-myself" zone, so I shall try to be brief. In fact the simple answer is: yes, it is.

A little too simple, though.

I know it is autobiographical because I have used my own sensations had in various dilemmas, to get a handle on how Rossamünd might feel and react - not intentionally to in some strange way to write my life story, but because it is what I know. In some sense too Book 1 is a kind of version of my own journey out from Adelaide to Sydney to take hold of the life of a freelance illustrator. To get deeper still it might be said it is also an exploration of my own naïve and nascent attempts to write my first book - but folks can go too far with that kind of deconstruction, and it misses the point of the work along with it.

I am told it is autobiographical by those who know me well, who say that can sense me in Rossamünd; who say they fell like they are spending time with me when they read the book(s). This I cannot account for except that it must be a result of the above - but to say Rossamünd is me would be an over-simplification and a mistake. Another book I hope to write some day will, Lord-willing, involve two characters who will both no doubt express facets of myself, maybe a more grown-up me, for they are both adults where Rosey-me-lad is just a boy.

Hmmm, Freudians might have a field day here...

Finally, it is time to celebrate the first character profile writ large - at last! Check it out in the column to the right, one of many answers to these questions, and the first in what I hope to be many public showings. Please enjoy.

Read More

"Crisis" in Painkiller Jane

Glenn sent a video clip from Sci-Fi's Painkiller Jane to me.


scifi_painkillerjane.wmv

In this scene, Tate Donovan's character has written down the character 易 on a piece of paper, then proceeds to claim it is 危機, "crisis".

"Here, it is Chinese. Wei ji. The top part is danger & bottom is opportunity. Two characters, one word "crisis"..."

Many non-Chinese speakers have used this misleading "danger+opportunity=crisis" reference in their speech, including Condoleezza Rice. My good friend Mark Swofford at Pinyin.info has posted an essay by Victor H. Mair about this misperception.

Read More

Australiana...

Here today in the sunny land of OZ it is the long weekend holiday of the Australia Day celebrations. I am, I must confess, a tad underwhelmed by it all. The truth of it is I do not feel particularly Australian as such; I do not get a warming golden glow when ever I think of kangaroos and Sydney Opera house, of broad Australian accents and gum trees. I feel no more affinity for a fellow Aussie than I do with any other person I meet - commonality of language is a great connector for me rather than nationality.

Is it terrible of me to admit this?

Maybe it simply reflects that I have not been out and about enough - too much sitting in darkened rooms inventing words, perhaps...

In fact the whole invention of the Half-Continent was and remains a way for me to collect all that I love about the environments and vibes of this country whilst divorcing it from what is commonly known here as "Australiana" - boomerangs, Eyre's Rock, "Coo-ee cobber!" and all that. There is this idea of Australian Fiction somehow being all about red dust and "out-back" living, yet I have been a city kid all my life and have a kind of European graft in all this waltzing of Matilda. My experience is never-the-less Australian and the Half-Continent is birthed from this, a kind of reconciling of my British heritage with my Australian environment.

So I posit that MBT is Australian Fiction, too, set in a place that in my soul is all about growing up in this broad brown land and as Australian in its depths as Man From Snowy River or Tim Winton.

~

Going off-topic now, my wife has been doing a short term intensive course in what is called ... at a bible college nearby and, my word! it is challenging stuff. I have learnt - as just one of many examples - that you can solve 70% of health issues in most poverty stricken areas by just ensuring a somewhat abundant source of somewhat clean water. That this sounds easy but that political/cultural issues make helping others far more complex - perhaps even more complex than they need to be. In helping my wife study I become familiar with five basic constants in improving a people's lot: sanitation, immunisation, education, access to water, family planning (also known as child spacing).

How much I take for granted!

I suppose most of all, as a not-quite-by-stander, I have been challenged that my life of middle class self-absorption might not be enough, that the quite introspective way of an author might need to expand beyond just me and mine.

Heavy heavy heavy - why is it that taking other people's pain seriously is so distruptive and troublesome?

Read More

Kinoki Detox Foot Pads

I have received several emails about Kinoki detoxifying foot pads.



Both Alan and I had a good laugh about the bizarre marketing tactic used by this company. Wired is calling this "the most appalling medical scam since magnetic immortality devices."

The three characters 木樹液 literally means "wood/tree sap". There is nothing traditionally Japanese about the product or the name. Our suspicion is that the manufacturer just picked a
Japanese-sounding name to peddle their schlock product to gullible Americans with a little bit of "Oriental mystique", and then afterward decided to slap the characters 木樹液 onto the TV ad as a sort of decoration.

Matter of fact, Kinoki is a direct rip-off from a brand of Japanese shoe inserts called 竹樹液, or "bamboo sap". They are only used to remove excess sweat from one's feet, therefore to eliminate foot odor. There is absolutely no claim of detoxifying heavy metal from one's body.

In my opinion, the people behind Kinoki detox foot pads should commit seppuku for misleading consumers.


Update: August 18, 2008 - NPR did a story today about this.

The newest craze in consumer health is adhesive pads filled with "detox" herbs that supposedly suck toxins out of the bottom of our feet while we sleep.

An analysis at a California laboratory shows no significant difference between used and unused pads.

Read More

Never mind the quality, feel the weight!

I have received an advanced copy of the ANZ edition of Lamplighter and I am bound to say, it is thick, as in chock the back wheel of your car when it is parked on a steep hill thick. Not quite as portable as Book 1 I am afraid. If a work's value is measure by the pound then Lamplighter should be an ok read.

It appears that the galleys (or ARCs) are doing their job - not only is Tara reading it (you show off, you ;) - but there is even a brief review (of sorts) for it online over at Bookshelves of Doom.

Speaking of reviews, I was sent a link to an online review for Foundling by my US publisher recently.

It is positive and encouraging but what is most gratifying to have a reviewer actually understand the Explicarium for a change - it has otherwise been accused of hype, page filling, author's notes other writers have more wit to not include and just plain unnecessary. Well thank you, Olgy Gary, for your insight.

And might I just say how excellent your comments were last post, entertaining and diverting: a most hearty conversation. I agree that labels do bite the big one but I am curious if there is possible a genre title that can be given to MBT - chemo-something... I don't know.

(Oh, and I have to credit the title of this post to my editor Celia Jellet - spake upon receiving the ARC late last year)

Read More

Steampunk - to steam or not to punk?

I found - well "found" is a bit of a fib, I was actually Google-alerted to the existence of this post... anyway - I was alerted to this interesting and most excellent article by S.F.Winser upon the humble topic of "steampunk", which included a brief mention of my own work.

Now, previously I would have reacted with a little heat to someone lumping MBT into the steampunk genre because by my own definition of the term, MBT has neither steam nor magic crammed together in that wonderfully uncomfortable manner that is a hallmark of the scene (such as in Mr Mieville's wonderful world). Neither is the Half-Continent and the lands about a Victorian world (as sooooo many keep mistakenly identify it - I defy anyone to show me evidence of the wearing of tri-corner hats in Victorian England, except perhaps by the most rustic) - no it is as, I have conceived it, Georgian, Hanovarian and a wee bit of the Enlightenment too.

Yet if you take Mr Winser's definition: "Steampunk comes from a time when a scientist could make anything in his basement. It might be something clunky-looking, it might be something beautiful - but dammit it would look interesting and it would work..." then, by the precious here and vere! it IS most certainly steampunk, through and through. Some of my earliest writings upon the H-c and beyond were of benighted laboratories where mad dabblers concocted wickedness to let loose on the ignorant world, and people would disappear to end up as parts in a some thrice-wretched experiment.

So steam the punks I say, though maybe go easy on the steam and invite some frock-coated folk along instead.

(I must confess I quoted Mr Winser's article without permission - I hope he does not mind, it is done in the spirit of conversation. If you do mind, sir, I apologise and humbly ask you if I might use this quote...)

Read More

Librarian's Freebie

Everyone has a different opinion about librarians. Some may think they are a bunch stiffy nerds who are addicted to books & obsessive compulsively trying keep everything in order. While, other urban myth has branded librarians as a naughty bunch of nympho sexual freaks.

Few weeks ago I received this photo from a librarian. She got it over ten years ago and thought it mean "to give love". Of course with time, certain phrases in any language would morph astray from their original meaning.



I had a discussion with Alan, my senior Japanese linguistic consultant (I want my "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" back, damn it!), about this and here is our conclusion.

Tian: 付 in Chinese means "to give/pay". To me, this tattoo 付恋 means "pay(paid) love". What do you think?

Alan: This combination 付恋 is not found in Japanese, so it has no fixed meaning.

I can't think of an instance in Japanese where 付 or 付ける has the meaning of "to give/pay" but it certainly does have lots of meanings. A lot of them have to with adding something, fixing or attaching something to something else. There is one sense where 付け means a "tab" or "bill" at a bar or the like, so it has more of the sense of running up or adding to a bill rather than paying it.

The phrase -付き as a suffix means "with" in the sense of something that comes with something else like an apartment that comes with a garage or a lunch set with coffee.

Perhaps the creator of this tattoo wanted 付恋 to mean "with love" but the character order is wrong for Japanese. This would also not be the normal way to write "with love" anyway, because it would be more like 愛を込めて as a set phrase for this.

Well, I guess it could be interpreted as something like giving love in addition to something else. A "freebie" perhaps? Giving a little love on the side? I don't know.

Tian: The owner of this tattoo is a librarian, and you know the rumors about how naughty those librarians... ;)

Alan: Oh, yeah? You don't say... I thought those librarians were a pretty straitlaced, bookish sort. You'll have to tell me some of those rumors...

Read More

A New Year A New Post - or bad, indulgent poetry

Well here we are a new year and all that - already it is a week old and I have not posted anything.

What is up with that?

How are folks liking the Word of the Day and the Match Up? Keep them? Ditch 'em? I thought they give a bit of extra interest - since I do like words and all. I play the Match Up one very often and glow at myself for how many words I know (which is mostly fluke, 'cause once I have sussed those I do actually recall, the half-known words soon match and then there is usually one set left that must fit by default. Easy!)

Well, in moving house I dug up a few weird odds and sods including some bizarre poetry from the very midst of my childhood. If I may, I am going to indulge myself in exposing one of my first poems (which, let's be honest, I cannot think is too bad or I would not be prepared to share it now, would I...) So here is the beginnings of the "great writing career" called Look to the Fly on the Wall.

Look to the fly on the wall,
For there lies your sense of vulgarity.
I stand at the door and knock,
To enter the exit
And come in to go out.
Why is water wet?
Why does a ball come down,
To send ripples of green cascading over
Locks of dying shoelaces.
Twinkle twinkle little star,
How I wonder what Rhinos are.
Mushrooms of cloud
To eat for dinner;
Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall
To chew some gum for breakfast.
Far away, an infant
Dropped his ice cream
Drip drip
Closer to home, I blow my nose
To direct my thoughts to amoebas
swimming in their void of fulfilment.
So -
Look to the fly on the wall,
For there lies your sense of vulgarity.

Deep is it not... Not sure what it all means; clearly a late cold war piece with that "mushrooms of cloud for dinner" line - very high school art project of me.

Ok, self-indulgence now finished.

Read More